EVIDENCE OF PARALLEL DIMENSIONS: Are We Living In Just One Of Multiple Universes?
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They've been here for thousands of years, making their presence known in the shadows. They might be seen by a lonely motorist on a deserted road late at night, or by a frightened and confused husband in the bedroom he's sharing with his wife. Perhaps the most disconcerting part of this phenomenon boils down to this question: has the government been aware of their presence all along and is covertly working with them towards some secret end?

In the audiobook, Runs of Disclosure, what once was fringe is now reality. While listening, you'll meet regular people just like you who have encountered something beyond their ability to explain. You'll also hear from people of great faith and deep religious belief who continue to have these strange and deeply unsettling encounters. Author L.A. Marzulli explores these ongoing incidents to discover the answers to these questions.

Who are they? What do they want? And why are they here? Can you handle the truth? Listen to this audiobook if you dare. Rungs of Disclosure Following the Trail of Extraterrestrials and the End Times by L.A. Marzulli Narrated by Darren Marlar Hear a free sample on the audiobook's page at WeirdDarkness.com It seemed like just another normal day.

But she noticed something odd. She didn't recognize the bedsheets she had just slept on. She didn't think much about it, but soon, she noticed small things around her that suggested something was wrong. Her apartment seemed to be the same, but some items seemed out of place, as if they didn't belong there. Some items in her flat were missing, while others were things she had never seen before. What was wrong?

The most shocking discovery was that her boyfriend was gone. Did he leave her? Where did he go? At first, Linaya thought her boyfriend had gone missing. However, the truth was much more horrifying. She looked for his phone number and couldn't find it. She asked her friends about him, but no one seemed to know who she was talking about. Linaya thought she might be going insane.

She contacted the police and reported her boyfriend missing, but the police told her there were no records of the person she was looking for. Linaya couldn't understand what was happening. Though she was convinced she was perfectly sane, she visited a psychiatrist, who told her she experienced hallucinations due to stress. Linaya disagreed. She was convinced something serious had happened.

When Linaya visited her family, she talked about her sister, but her parents told her the events she mentioned never happened. For example, her family didn't remember a surgery that was performed on her sister's shoulder a few months before. When Linaya asked her sister, she said she had never been operated on.

There were so many things around Linaya that simply did not make sense. It was as if she was talking about events she had been experiencing in another life, another timeline. Linaya went to work, and even there it was clear her life situation had changed in ways she couldn't ever dream of. She worked for the same company, but in a different department, in another part of the building.

She said she felt so disoriented at work, she told her supervisor she was ill and went home. At first, it took her some time to find her supervisor because it was a person she had never met before. Although her boss claimed to know her well, she noticed that she had the same driver's license and her IDs were in order. But so many other things in her life were just wrong. She remembered events that people say never happened.

Her boyfriend, whom she knew well, was said to have never existed. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos! I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, the strange and bizarre, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained.

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Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness! Sometimes it's not what you can see, but what you cannot see that makes a huge impact. When I was young, my family moved around a lot.

Every few years, we would pack up and move to another house, always in the hope that the next move would be the last and that we could set roots one day. Living in South Africa, we also had a lot of dogs for protection. These poor animals would also need to pick up roots every few years and follow us around. Not that they seemed to mind all that much. On this particular occasion, we had moved to a new home that was close to my school.

Usually, in order for us to make the move a little easier, we would have someone stay at the old house and look after the dogs while we moved the furniture and got the house in order. And this time was no different. After almost two days of moving and packing and unpacking and cleaning, we were finally ready to introduce our dogs to the new home. I was also pretty excited about the new place.

As I said, it was close to my school. My bedroom was nice and sunny. It had a nice swimming pool and a decent-sized garden. Of course, I felt a little uneasy as well, but that's kind of normal when you move into a new place. You kind of have to settle a bit and make it your home. Build a memory or two before shipping off again. My uncle set off to go fetch the dogs, and my dad got stuck into setting up the TV.

After a few minutes, he called me to the lounge and told me that he was going on to the roof to adjust the aerial and that I should just monitor the television and let him know when it gets clear. At that stage, there was only static, and for about 10 minutes, there was no change. My father kept shouting down to me for a status check, and every time, the same result.

Eventually, after about half an hour, he came back down flustered and sweaty with no change to the stations. He proceeded to strip the aerial wiring for the back of the television to make sure there was no break in the connection, but nothing seemed to work. Eventually, he just gave up and turned off the set, mumbling under his breath about having to pay a technician after all the money we've just spent moving.

I went back to packing my room, and after a few minutes heard my uncle arrive and heard the commotion of the dogs. They seemed to love coming to a new place, running around like crazy, sniffing everything and barking with excitement. It always put a smile on my face. Strangely though, today they seemed a little too excited. They were barking a lot more than usual, and one of them seemed to be howling, which was not particularly normal.

After a while of this, I was getting pretty distracted and decided to investigate. I left my room and found that most of my family were gathered in the lounge. My father was shouting at the dogs by now but they were not stopping and seemed to be progressively getting more violent. When I arrived in the lounge, I saw that two of the dogs were barking ferociously at the TV. One of them was howling and another just sitting, staring. A chill ran up my spine that could not be explained.

The whole family seemed to be getting up in arms by now, and there was a new tension there that did not exist before. There was no more excitement, just a sense of anger, a sense of bitterness. I asked my dad what the dogs were barking at, and he shouted that he did not know. I suggested that he move the TV out of the corner, something that did not seem to occur to him before. As he moved towards it, the dogs became much more agitated.

Eventually, though, he was able to move it and just as he did, two things happened almost immediately. The first was that the TV turned on and with perfect signal and a clear screen and secondly, the dogs skittered away, running and yelping right out of the house. My mom was always quite spiritual and took it as a sign to get out fast.

And so, after a long conversation with my dad, she took the dogs and went back to the old house. I stayed in the new house one night, with nothing else happening. But the next day, I found myself packing once again. Hold the kaleidoscope to your eye. Peer inside. One twist changes everything. A woman awakens in a grotesque, human-sized arcade game.

A mysterious cigar box purchased at a farmer's market releases an ancient djinn who demands a replacement prisoner. An elderly woman possesses the terrifying power to inflict pain through handmade dolls. An exclusive restaurant's sinister secret menu includes murder-for-hire and harvested organs.

With each turn through these 20 tales, Reddit NoSleep favorite AP Royal reshapes reality, creating dazzling patterns of horror that entrance as they terrify. The Kaleidoscope, 20 Terrifying Tales of Horror and the Supernatural by AP Royal, narrated by Darren Marlar. Hear a free sample on the audiobooks page at WeirdDarkness.com.

Do you like my horror-able humor episodes called Mind of Marler? If so, and you'd like more, it now has its very own podcast. Comedic creeps, sarcastic scares, frivolous frights, macabre madness. Every week I dive into strange history, twisted true crime, and paranormal weirdness. All the stuff you'd expect from me on Weird Darkness, but delivered with dark comedy, satire, and just the right amount of absurdity.

In searching for other ghost stories during his research for a book on the paranormal in the Czech Republic, G. Michael Vasey came across a rather remarkable review of a Prague hotel in TripAdvisor.

The Residence Green Lobster is a luxury four-star hotel in Prague. It got the following five-star review on TripAdvisor.com in 2011. My wife and I stayed at the wonderful Green Lobster Hotel and we had the first suite on the first floor. The suite was amazing and more than comfortable. We have to say by far the best hotel we have stayed in in our trips to Prague.

However, we did believe there was a little bit of spiritual activity in the suite to keep us both entertained. Both my wife and I struggle to believe in anything like that, but if it's in your face, you can't argue, can you? The first thing was a light stroking of my face on the first night that woke me up with a jolt, I can tell you.

The second night, I experienced nothing but my wife had a sentence whispered to her in Czech that she could not say back to me as neither of us speak Czech. The third night, I heard someone say to me, "Help!" and we both awoke to see the small cupboard in our room open. However, this was strange as it was locked shut.

But on our last night, it was the most active. We both awoke at 4:30 a.m. to the sound of someone walking around and moving things about in the room directly below us. I went to check, but it stopped instantly. Half an hour later, we awoke again to a sound of dripping water. I checked the taps in the room downstairs, but all was fine and the sink was dry. I'm a plumber by trade, so I know when something's not right.

We went back to bed and slept without another incident. Until the morning came and my wife could not find her phone. We turned the place upside down and found nothing. Until my wife went to put her shoes on and found it under her shoe. All in all, we were not bothered by what went on. If anything, it added a little more character to the suite that was already amazing in our eyes.

We will stay here again as we loved it and the staff made it a joy to stay at as well. Thank you Green Lobster Hotel for giving us a wonderful stay and experience. I work nights and tend to eat then go straight to bed. I live alone with my dog. She's not much of a barker or a yapper. She's generally very quiet and good-natured. I was just dozing off when she started barking and growling at a wall.

I jumped up but couldn't see anything. She kept barking, growling and pawing at the wall. I wondered if it was a noise outside. I went to the door, stepped outside and usually she runs outside. She stayed, barking at the wall. This went on for about ten minutes. Then she stopped, curled up and went to sleep. The next night, she did exactly the same thing.

I couldn't see anything, but she woke up, started barking and pawing the wall. The night after that, she didn't do it. I thought she'd gotten it out of her system. The following Sunday, she woke me up at 4 in the morning, howling, barking, and pawing at that wall. I still have no idea what happened, but I'm starting to wonder if this is something paranormal. As I say, we live alone in a semi-detached house.

There were no noises, no possible intruders, and no traffic. Has anyone else experienced this kind of frantic barking from their dog in the middle of the night? Where the town of Bradley Stoke, near Bristol in the UK, was built, there once stood a small wood called Fiddler Wood. Its name lives on as Fiddler's Wood Road.

The wood is said to have gotten its name from the legend of a creepy old man who used to tempt children from the local farmhouses into the woods with the sound of his fiddle. He's sometimes described as a dark or shadowy figure.

And although Fiddler's Woods no longer remains, there are several other small areas of woodland in the town, and people often report hearing disembodied music coming from the woods at night, or echoing around the time on summer evenings. There's even been sightings of the figure as recently as 2015 in one of the local pubs, the Bailey's Court Inn, which is one of the original farmhouses. It was May 2015.

Me and my friends were going for one of my college friend's wedding. She's also in my college gang. The wedding is in Nasik, a place in India. My friends and family booked a lawn for the guest. We catch a train one day before the wedding from Dadar station, one of the railway stations in Mumbai, India, for Nasik. All my friends enjoyed the journey, and I was also enjoying it with them.

It was six hours, so not so far of a journey. Even my boyfriend came with us, so I was really very happy. After reaching Nasik, we visited the lawn. We saw the number of guests and decided to take a room in a nearby hotel. The lawn has less number of rooms and dirty toilets too, so after reaching there, we met our bride-to-be friend and spent some time with her, and everything was going normal. In the evening time, we went out to search for a hotel room,

Actually, a cheaper one which wouldn't give a heart attack to our pockets. We found one hotel which is a bit costly so we decided to look for another one. We were number six looking for them when we decided to buy a single room for one night and one day. After searching for some time, we found one. It was not so expensive, no AC. After getting rest for a couple of hours, we all went out for food.

After getting our stomachs tight, we quickly went for my friends Sanjit and Haldi's ceremony. We all enjoyed it, dancing, drinking, and enjoying every moment. And we were all drunk now and wanted some rest. We moved to our hotel room and started resting. I'm sure you know friends just can't be quiet when together. We started gossiping as well. Then suddenly my boyfriend started telling ghost stories just to tease us.

Around 1:30 in the morning, all my friends slept. One of my friends went inside the toilet and didn't come out. Around 2:00 a.m., I got up to use the toilet, but he was still inside. I waited for two hours. When he finally came out, he was looking disturbed. Then I went into the toilet room and felt some odd happenings. There's a window in the room, which you can see the backside of the building. In the backside, there's one broken old building, and it was empty.

It's kind of a disturbing place. When I came out, I was also feeling disturbed, or shall I say, feared. I took a nap of hardly about an hour. The next morning, I asked my friend what he was doing inside the bathroom for so long. He said he saw a man wearing a white shirt in that broken building and he was smoking a cigarette for two hours. How can anyone smoke a single cigarette for two hours? I got scared.

At the same time, we have to leave that place to attend the marriage ceremony. So one by one, we went for a bath. I was the first one to take a bath. I opened the water tab and suddenly I heard someone singing and calling my name. I thought it was my friends. I shouted to stop calling my name, but when I closed the tap, it was completely silent. Then again, I opened the tap and again I heard my name and singing.

I quickly took a bath and came out and said this to my friends and they started laughing. Second was my best friend to go inside the bathroom. She also heard the same thing. Whenever she opened the water tap, something or someone was calling her name. And then my boyfriend and one of my friends started roaming here and there and at different floors looking for a receptionist or somebody who could take the keys.

They saw a lady changing her clothes in the opposite room ours without closing the door. They even saw that white shirt man, but he vanished after a few seconds. Later we got to know that there is no one in the hotel. All the rooms are vacant. Even no one in the reception area, which we saw last night. There's no one to hand over the room keys to. So we called the person who arranged the room for us and handed the key to him.

That person also got scared after hearing this entire incident. He was a local and helping visitors to get hotel rooms and favors of small amounts. We were all terrified and were looking worried in the marriage ceremony and never wanted to go back to that place. But I don't know why my friends left their luggage in that room and after the ceremony we again had to go back to the hotel. We called the local man for the key but he'd already left the key outside the room and switched off the cell number.

I did not step inside the building. My friends went to the room and took the luggage. We faced many difficulties trying to get out of that room. We missed the last train for Mumbai. There is no bus or car available to Mumbai. Finally, we got a private jeep for four people. Two people adjusted their seat and came back after so much of a struggle. We saw that man again in Mumbai the very next day. He was following us.

We saw that man at my friend's place. We all went to temple and started wearing holy lockets. He never followed us again after that." Everyone is supposed to have one doppelganger, an exact duplicate of yourself living a completely separate life somewhere in the world. Indeed, many of us have had the strange experience of a friend insisting they saw us somewhere when we weren't there.

For most of us, that lookalike is probably an ordinary flesh-and-blood person who, through the lottery of DNA, just happens to share our facial features and body shape. But then there are cases that are harder to explain. One of the most famous is that of Emily Saggy. Emily was born in the 19th century in Dijon, France. She made her living as a schoolteacher

She was pretty, intelligent, likable, and by all accounts a very good teacher. But she had a hard time holding a job because it seems she was trailed by a ghostly twin. Doppelganger is a German word meaning "double goer" or "double walker." The story that comes down to us is that Zagie's double was more of a curse than a curiosity. Emily had been fired from a total of 18 positions, the story goes.

because of her doppelganger. Her 19th job was at a prestigious girls' school in what is now Latvia. The school educated wealthy daughters of the elite. It was from here that we get the most detailed accounts. The first appearance of the doppelganger was in a classroom. 13 students said that Emily was teaching. Her doppelganger appeared right at her side and imitated all her movements.

Though everyone in the room could see the specter, Emily apparently could not. Later, the doppelganger appeared sitting calmly in Emily's chair at the head of the classroom while Emily herself was outside in the garden. Some brave students attempted to touch the apparition. Their hands passed through her, though they reported feeling a substance like a thick cloth. Most teachers would agree it would be useful to be able to be in two places at once.

And some paranormal theorists believe Emily's doppelganger may indeed have arisen out of her attempts to be a better teacher and keep a closer watch over her students. But if the doppelganger was trying to help, she didn't. It seems Emily lost her position at this school as well. Still, Emily should be grateful she never saw her own doppelganger. Meeting your spectral double is said to be very bad luck.

Now there's a new way to share weird darkness with the weirdos in your life. It's a skill on your Amazon Echo device. Just say, play Weird Darkness, and you'll immediately start hearing the newest episode. With your Amazon Echo or smart device, you can let me keep you company all day and all night. And it's easy to tell your friends how to tune in, too. Just tell your Amazon device, play Weird Darkness, to start listening. ♪

More and more scientists are convinced our world is surrounded by a number of parallel worlds that are invisible to the naked eye. Although no one has so far been able to prove that our universe is only one of many, there are a number of clues that suggest parallel universes do exist.

Some of these clues are based on scientific evidence, but there are also certain unusual and unexplained events that indicate we cannot dismiss the multiverse theory easily. I'm going to examine some of the clues that we've encountered so far,

But it must be added that this is by no means conclusive evidence. Conclusive proof of extra hidden dimensions and evidence of parallel universes would undoubtedly be a major breakthrough in physics and cosmology. It could mean that faster-than-light travel might be possible and our existing laws of the universe would have to be rewritten. 1. Mysterious ripples in space. Time may offer proof of parallel universes.

Finding evidence of parallel universes is very challenging. Scientists have hoped that the Large Hadron Collider might reveal evidence of their existence, but so far definitive proof has not been discovered with the LHC. Physicists have studied gravitational waves, ripples in space-time caused by the motion of massive objects, and now they suggest these waves might allow for a single coherent theory of the universe,

Basically, this means that signs of extra dimensions may reveal themselves in the way they impact gravitational waves. If there are extra dimensions in the universe, then gravitational waves can walk along any dimension, even the extra dimensions. This suggests parallel universes can exist. What if our universe is just one of many universes coexisting next to each other?

The multiverse theory has been treated by physicists as intriguing, but so far it has remained in the realm of theory without any experimental tests that could support it. If there are extra dimensions in the universe, the gravitational waves can walk along any dimension. Even the extra dimensions, says Gustavo Lucera-Gomez at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, Germany.

Together with his colleague David Andriot, Gomez has tried to calculate how potential extra dimensions would affect the gravitational waves that we are able to observe. They found two peculiar effects: extra waves at high frequencies and a modification of how gravitational waves stretch space. Why gravity is so weak compared with other fundamental forces has long been a subject of debate.

Researchers suggest that some of the gravity is leaking away into extra dimensions beyond the three spatial dimensions we experience. As gravitational waves propagate through a tiny extra dimension, the team found they should generate a tower of extra gravitational waves with high frequencies following a regular distribution. Currently, we're unable to observe frequencies at that range, but we have technology to study the so-called breathing mode.

"Like your lungs, as you breathe, space expands and contracts as gravitational waves pass through, in addition to stretching and squishing." "With more detectors, we'll be able to see whether this breathing mode is happening," says Lucena Gomez. "Extra dimensions have been discussed for a long time from different points of view," says Emilien Doudas at the École Polytechnique in France. "Gravitational waves could be a new twist on looking for extra dimensions."

It's probably not a unique signature, says Dudas, but it would be a very exciting thing. 2. Black holes could be gateways to parallel universes. The idea that black holes could be gateways to parallel universes has been a popular science fiction topic for a long time. But is it scientifically possible?

According to Stephen Hawking, renowned theoretical physicist and cosmologist, mysterious, destructive, dark parts of the universe could answer one of the most puzzling paradoxes of physics: the existence of parallel universes. Stephen Hawking has argued in favor of the parallel universe theory for many years. It has previously been assumed that anything that falls into a black hole would be destroyed and lost forever.

But Hawking is of a different opinion. Hawking suggests the black holes are not as black as previously thought. In his opinion, it is highly possible that something falls through black holes without being destroyed and enters a parallel universe. To explain how information can escape from a black hole is a challenge. Stephen Hawking calculated that black holes eventually must end,

According to his calculations, the black holes eventually begin to leak information and eventually explode, which would release the trapped particles in any form. That way out wouldn't take people back to where they'd come from, he said. Instead, they would reappear but somewhere else, perhaps even in an alternative universe.

"The existence of alternative histories with black holes suggests this might be possible. The hole would need to be large, and if it was rotating, it might have a passage to another universe." "But you couldn't come back to our universe," Hawking explained. "Black holes are not eternal prisons, as we once thought. If you feel you're trapped in a black hole, don't give up. There is a way out," Stephen Hawking said during a speech at Harvard last year. 3.

A mirror world could be hiding behind dark matter. The possibility that there could be a mirror world hiding behind dark matter would rewrite our understanding of the universe. Dark matter is one of the great mysteries of the universe. No one knows what it consists of, and no one has seen it, because it doesn't interact with the matter scientists know about.

Many scientific labs are trying to detect dark matter since the Earth is moving in a cosmic wind of dark matter. A final identification of what makes up the enigmatic dark matter would open up a whole new area of research, including the possibility of multiple universes and other dimensions. For many years, people have envisioned the existence of other worlds, in which it must apply the law of our own, real world.

"People have imagined the other world as a mirror of our own world that we live in." Attempts to find a mirror image of our world is made by physicists in their laboratories, but until now these attempts have not been successful. With help of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a particle detector operating onboard the International Space Station since 2011, scientists have counted more than 400,000 positrons, the antimatter equivalent of electrons.

Apparently, it's the existence of a new physical phenomenon, and it could in fact be a sign of dark matter. There could be a "mirror world" where interesting things are going on, according to James Bullock of the University of California at Irvine. The findings are based on an excess of positrons, positively charged subatomic particles.

"'This is an 80-year-old detective story, and we're getting close to the end,' said University of Chicago physicist Michael Turner, one of the giants in the field of dark matter. "'This is a tantalizing clue, and further results from AMS could finish the story,' he says. "'This dramatic new theory claims it could be hiding a mirror world that would rewrite our understanding of the universe.'"

4. South Atlantic Anomaly Could black holes on Earth be portals to parallel universes? Vortices on our planet are similar to black holes. Scientists have discovered that each vortex boundary in a turbulent fluid contains a singularity, just like an astrophysical black hole.

The South Atlantic Anomaly, or SAA, refers to the area where the Earth's inner Van Allen radiation belt comes closest to the Earth's surface. This leads to an increased flux of energetic particles in this region and exposes orbiting satellites to higher-than-usual levels of radiation. The effect is caused by the non-concentricity of the Earth and its magnetic dipole, and the SAA is the near-Earth region where the Earth's magnetic field is weakest.

An intriguing possibility is that such remarkable vortices could be gateways to parallel worlds or other dimensions. Black holes are strange objects we encounter in space. They're not only mysterious and very fascinating to astronomers, but also incredibly powerful forces. A black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much even light cannot get out. The gravity is so strong because matter has been squeezed into a tiny space.

This can happen when a star is dying. Because no light can get out, people can't see black holes. They are invisible. The reason why we can know of black holes' existence is because space telescopes with special tools can help find black holes. The special tools can see how stars that are very close to black holes act differently than other stars. So what is the connection between the South Atlantic anomaly and black holes? The shape of the SAA changes over time.

The South Atlantic anomaly is of great significance to astronomical satellites and other spacecraft that orbit the Earth at several hundred kilometers altitude. These orbits take satellites through the anomaly periodically, exposing them to several minutes of strong radiation, caused by the trapped protons in the inner Van Allen belt each time.

As described in Technology Review's article, the vortices that can form in turbulent water are a familiar sight. Edgar Allan Poe described such a whirlpool in his short story, A Descent into a Maelstrom, which he published in 1841. The edge of the whirl was represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray, but no particle of this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, Poe wrote.

In his passage, Poe describes one of the crucial features of these rotating bodies of fluid: that they can be thought of as coherent islands in an incoherent flow. As such, they are essentially independent of their environment, surrounded by a seemingly impenetrable boundary and with little if any of the fluid inside of them leaking out. If you're thinking that this description has a passing resemblance to a black hole, you'd be right.

Haller and Baron-Vera put this similarity on a formal footing by describing the behavior of vortices in turbulent fluids using the same mathematics that describe black holes. That has important implications for the study of fluids and the identification of vortices, which are otherwise tricky to define and spot.

These guys used satellite images of the South Atlantic Ocean from between November 2006 and February 2007 to look for vortices using a set of simple computational steps that spot black hole analogs

In this three-month period, they found eight candidates, two of which turned out to be black hole analogs containing photon spheres. "We found exceptionally coherent material belts in the South Atlantic filled with analogs of photon spheres around black holes," they conclude. "That's an interesting result that could have significant implications for our understanding of the way ocean currents transport material."

Since anything that gets into these black holes can't get out, this should trap any garbage, oil or indeed water itself, moving it coherently over vast distances. Beyond the mathematical equivalence, there are also observational reasons for viewing coherent eddies as black holes, says Haller and Baron-Vera.

The work also raises the possibility that black hole analogs will occur in other situations, such as in hurricanes, not just on Earth. By this way of thinking, the Great Red Spot on Jupiter might well be the most famous black hole in the solar system. An intriguing possibility is that such remarkable vortices could be gateways to parallel worlds or other dimensions.

In this case, it is simply a question of looking for the singularity and the boundary that surrounds it. And that's exactly what Haller and Baron Vera have done in the pattern of currents in the southwest Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic. A well-known phenomenon in this part of the world is called the Agulhas Leakage, which comes from the Agulhas Current in the Indian Ocean.

At the end of its southward flow, this boundary current turns back on itself, creating a loop that occasionally pinches off and releases eddies into the South Atlantic, they say. 5. Mystery of the Mandela Effect: Are False Memories Proof of Parallel Universes? A controversial and intriguing theory suggests that false memories could be proof of parallel universes.

Scientists are naturally divided on this topic, and most think false memories are a result of how we misremember things. Yet, perhaps there is more to it than we are aware. It has been suggested that people are sliding between multiple universes, and that's how we create very odd memories of something we've never seen or heard in this world.

Basically, the Mandela Effect refers to a phenomenon in which a large number of people share false memories of past events, referred to as "confabulation" in psychiatry. Some have speculated that the memories are caused by parallel universes spilling into our own, while others explain the phenomenon as a failure of collective memory.

The theory that false memories can be traced to the existence of parallel universes is rather new, but we will undoubtedly hear much more about it in the near future. The term "Mandela Effect" was coined by blogger Fiona Broome when she discovered that she, along with many others, shared the same distinct memory of former South African President Nelson Mandela dying in a South African prison in the 1980s.

Mandela died in 2013, in the comfort of his home, having served as South Africa's president for some time after the '80s. Gene A. Brewer, Ph.D., an associate professor at Arizona State University's Department of Psychology, has studied memory through experiments and neuroimaging, and he doesn't think there is a connection between false memories and parallel universes.

"All of us fall victim to false memory," he says. "We all misremember things, and we do it in a stereotypical way. Our systems work very similar to one another. So I may have a false memory, you may have a false memory, and those could be very similar to one another." According to Professor Brewer, it's due to "recombination" or a daily process in which a person's brain takes fragments from the past and tries to reassemble them in a way that makes sense.

"As you're trying to remember what the Monopoly Man may have looked like," he said, "you may inadvertently remember some bits and pieces about the Planter's Peanut Man." Professor Brewer explained that a human brain remembers the top hat on both mascots and subconsciously placed Mr. Peanut's eyeglasses onto Monopoly Man's face. Professor Brewer said the Mandela Effect can also be explained by a process called "collective remembering."

"We communicate false memories through the groups that we are associated to," said Brewer. "That leads to a cultural false memory where many people hold the same false belief that things happened that didn't really happen." Dave Campbell, a media man hypnotherapist, has an entirely different opinion.

Some people say past lives, some people say our souls split in many pieces, and we can experience many lives at the same time. Sometimes we have similar inventions in different universes at the same time, like the microwave. In one universe we might call it a microwave, in another universe we call it a quick cooker, Campbell said.

It'll take some strong arguments and evidence to convince cognitive scientists that false memories are the result of people's visits to parallel worlds, especially since physicists still haven't found conclusive proof that parallel worlds do exist. But all controversial theories are intriguing and should be investigated. It cannot be denied that there is still so much we do not know about the nature of space and time, not to mention our role in the universe.

6. Can parallel universes explain the déjà vu phenomenon? Have you ever had a déjà vu experience? It's the feeling or impression that you've already witnessed or experienced a current situation. The term déjà vu is French. It means literally "already seen." It is a rather common, yet little understood phenomenon.

Most of us have experienced being in a new place and feeling certain that we've been there before, but we have difficulties understanding how it's possible. In recent years, as more scientists began studying this phenomenon, a number of theories about déjà vu have emerged, suggesting that it's not merely a glitch in our brain's memory system.

Psychologists have suggested that déjà vu may occur when specific aspects of a current situation resemble certain aspects of previously occurring situations. If there's a lot of overlap between the elements of the new and old situations, we get a strong feeling of familiarity.

Alternative explanations associate déjà vu with prophecy, past life memories, clairvoyance, or a mystic signpost indicating fulfillment of a predetermined condition on the journey of life, whatever the explanation. Déjà vu is certainly a phenomenon that is universal to the human condition, and its fundamental cause is still a mystery.

Another intriguing possibility is that there is a hidden connection between déjà vu and the existence of parallel universes. According to Dr. K. Koo, quantum physics states that there is a possibility that déjà vu might be caused by your ability to flip between different universes. Dr. K. Koo mentions Professor Steve Weinberg, the famous theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner, supports the idea of a multiverse.

Weinberg says that there are an infinite number of parallel realities coexisting with us in the same room. For a long time, this eerie sensation has been attributed to everything from paranormal disturbances to neurological disorders. In recent years, as more scientists began studying this phenomenon, a number of theories about déjà vu have emerged.

There are hundreds of different radio waves being broadcast all around you from distant stations. At any given instant, your office or car or living room is full of these radio waves. However, if you turn on a radio, you can listen to only one frequency at a time. These other frequencies are not in phase with each other. Each station has a different frequency, a different energy. As a result, your radio can only be tuned to one broadcast at a time.

Likewise, in our universe we are tuned into the frequency that corresponds to physical reality. But there are an infinite number of parallel realities coexisting with us in the same room, although we cannot tune into them. While your radio is tuned to pick up a certain frequency and thus a single radio station, our universe consists of atoms that are oscillating at a unique frequency that other universes are not vibrating at.

Universes are usually not in phase, that is vibrating at the same frequency with each other due to the divisions caused by time, but when they are in phase, it is theoretically possible to move back and forth between universes. So although it is uncertain, it could be possible that when you are experiencing déjà vu, you are vibrating in unison with a parallel universe.

Perhaps our deja vu experiences are a window into a parallel universe. 7. Are some of our dreams glimpses from a parallel universe? In this world, there could be a copy of yourself making different decisions and seeing places that somehow later manifest themselves in your dreams.

For thousands of years, people have wondered about the meaning of dreams. Why do some people dream about future events? Why are some dreams full of hidden meaning? Can some of our dreams be glimpses of events taking place in an alternate reality, a parallel universe? For almost 100 years, science has been haunted by a dark secret: that there might be mysterious, hidden worlds beyond our human senses.

Mystics had long claimed there were such places. They were, they said, full of ghosts and spirits. The last thing science wanted was to be associated with such superstition. But ever since the 1920s, physicists have been trying to make sense of an uncomfortable discovery. When they tried to pinpoint the exact location of atomic particles like electrons, they found it was utterly impossible.

They had no single location, and this is one of the reasons why scientists are becoming more and more interested in the possible existence of parallel worlds. The only explanation which anyone could come up with is that the particles don't just exist in our universe. They flit into existence in other universes too, and there are an infinite number of these parallel universes, all of them slightly different. Our ancestors were as curious about dreams as modern scientists are today.

Ancient Greeks and Romans believed dreams provided messages from the gods. In ancient China, people treated dreams as a way to visit the world of the dead. Ancient Egyptians were convinced that those who could interpret dreams possessed special powers. Many Native American tribes and Mexican civilizations believed dreams were a different world we visit when we sleep.

Today, we know that dreams are often expressions of thoughts, feelings, and events that pass through our mind while we're sleeping. Dreams can be in color and include all the senses, smells, sounds, sights, tastes, and things we touch. We know more about the science of dreaming because researchers can take pictures of people's brains while they're sleeping. Over the years, scientists have learned a lot about dreams, but there are still many things that remain unknown.

Could there be a parallel universe in which Napoleon won the Battle of Waterloo? Is there another parallel universe where the British Empire held on to its American colony? Is there a universe where you were never born? The multiverse is a theory in which our universe is not the only one, but states that many universes exist parallel to each other. These distinct universes within the multiverse theory are called parallel universes.

Of course, the multiverse theory is just a theory. The existence of parallel universes has not been proven and the subject is widely debated among physicists. By this very definition of "universe," one might expect the notion of a multiverse to be forever in the domain of metaphysics. Yet the borderline between physics and metaphysics is defined by whether a theory is experimentally testable, not by whether it is weird or involves unobservable entities.

"The frontiers of physics have gradually expanded to incorporate ever more abstract and once metaphysical concepts, such as a round Earth, invisible electromagnetic fields, time slowdown at high speeds, quantum superpositions, curved space, and black holes. Over the past several years, the concept of a multiverse has joined this list," said Max Tegmark, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The fundamental problem of cosmology is that the laws of physics as we know them break down at the instant of the Big Bang. Some people say, "What's wrong with that? What's wrong with having the laws of physics collapse?" For a physicist, this is a disaster. All our lives we've dedicated to the proposition that the universe obeys knowable laws. Laws that can be written down in the language of mathematics, and here we have the centerpiece of the universe itself, a missing piece beyond physical law.

In a parallel world, there could be a copy of yourself. The life of this person has been identical to yours in every respect. Still, there are certain things you and your copy might do different. Perhaps he or she now decides to stop listening to this podcast without finishing it while you continue to listen. Your timelines are similar but not identical because you coexist in alternate worlds.

People often have a recurring dream about a place they never visited or even heard of. Perhaps such dreams are glimpses from what one experienced in a parallel universe. Sometimes people dream about events that have not yet happened but will take place in the future. Such dreams could also be incoming images from an alternate world where you are living a different life. Who knows? Perhaps some of our most special dreams are a window into a parallel universe.

This is, of course, pure speculation, but without speculation and scientific curiosity, we will never be able to learn more about the secrets of the universe and our reality. We can express it, as Professor Tegmark once said, when we ask a profound question about the nature of reality, do we not expect an answer that sounds strange? Whenever we venture beyond the everyday world, we should expect it to seem bizarre. 8.

Stories about people who entered a parallel universe. There are many strange stories about people who vanished into thin air, never to be seen again. Did these people enter a parallel world? For example, many years ago, El Tiempo, one of the largest newspapers in Venezuela, reported about a very strange and unexplained disappearance of a professor who simply vanished in front of many people. He was never seen again.

The following case occurred many years ago and was reported by El Tiempo, one of the largest newspapers in Venezuela. According to journalist Segunda Pena, who wrote the story, a certain prominent unnamed university professor had been missing for over 40 years. Based on eyewitness reports from people who last saw him alive, the professor slipped into a parallel world.

Private detectives and police have been searching for the missing professor for years, and no one has a clue what really happened to him. The incident occurred on the campus of the University of the Andes in the city of Merida, Venezuela. It was late afternoon on a clear, sunny day in the early 1970s. The professor was seen by a number of people as he walked across the parking lot of the university building. On one occasion, he stopped to chat with at least one person as he moved towards his car.

When he got to his car, he noticed some students waving at him, and he waved back as he stepped into the vehicle and closed the door. Now, here comes the most curious part. He never drove away. The car was empty, and the professor was never seen again. It's as if the door of the car was a portal into another world. Journalist Segundo Pena wrote in his article, "...the car's owner has been gone for over 40 years. We don't mention his name out of respect for his family."

Was this person abducted by some strange forces alien to our own dimension? Science pursues its general research where psychology is aware that in many cases perceptual illusions, erroneous interpretations, hallucinations and fantasy-prone personalities have sway, but the enigma is still present and unsolved.

Peña, who was very interested in this remarkable case, interviewed local police, who were charged with solving the missing person case of the university professor. In their notes, he found detailed interviews conducted with a number of people who witnessed the professor get into his car, only to see his car remain parked where it was. No one ever saw him get out. The disappearance of the Venezuelan professor remains an unexplained mystery to this day.

What is unusual and almost unheard of is that someone who lives in unknown realms suddenly enters our universe. To them and their universe of origin, our world would be a parallel universe. And this is exactly what happened to Lina Barsilla, a woman from Spain who suddenly felt everything around her was wrong. Her story is so bizarre that many people who have heard it have a difficult time taking it seriously.

Was Lina Barcia delusional or did she suffer from mental illness? It's easy to dismiss her story as fantasies. But what if her experience is real? Could she be a true visitor from another world? Did she fall into our universe by mistake? It all started when Lina Barcia woke up in her Madrid apartment one morning. It seemed like just another normal day. But she noticed something odd.

She didn't recognize the bedsheets she had just slept on. She didn't think much about it, but soon she noticed small things around her that suggested something was wrong. Her apartment seemed to be the same, but some items seemed out of place, as if they didn't belong there. Some items in her flat were missing, while others were things she had never seen before. What was wrong? The most shocking discovery was that her boyfriend was gone. Did he leave her? Where did he go?

At first, Linia thought her boyfriend had gone missing. However, the truth was much more horrifying. She looked for his phone number and couldn't find it. She asked her friends about him, but no one seemed to know who she was talking about. Linia thought she might be going insane. She contacted the police and reported her boyfriend missing, but the police told her that there were no records of the person she was looking for. Linia couldn't understand what was happening.

Though she was convinced she was perfectly sane, she visited a psychiatrist who told her she experienced hallucinations due to stress. Linia disagreed. She was convinced something serious had happened. When Linia visited her family, she talked about her sister, but her parents told her the events she mentioned never happened. For example, her family didn't remember a surgery that was performed on her sister's shoulder a few months ago.

When Lenia asked her sister, she said that she had never been operated on. There were so many things around Lenia that simply did not make sense. It was as if she was talking about events she'd been experiencing in another life, another timeline. Lenia went to work and even there, it was clear her life situation had changed in ways she couldn't dream of. She worked for the same company, but in a different department, in another part of the building.

She said that she felt so disoriented at work, she told her supervisor she was ill and went home. At first, it took her some time to find her supervisor because it was a person she had never met before, although her boss claimed to know her well. She noticed she had the same driver's license and her IDs were in order, but so many other things in her life were wrong.

She remembered events that people say never happened. Her boyfriend, whom she knew well, was said to have never existed. Items in her flat were unfamiliar. Linja has never been declared mentally ill, nor is she a drug user or drinker. She is a normal woman who told her story to the world, but few believe her. Today, she continues to search for clues.

She thinks she has slipped into another universe that is only slightly different from her home universe. Linia has accepted her fate and the possibility that she is stuck in this world and may never be able to go home again. The theory that parallel universes could exist is fascinating, and hopefully we learn more about this intriguing subject in the near future.

handprints in the mirrors, footsteps on the stairs, mysterious smells, vanishing objects, death by poison, hangings, murder, and gunfire. The Myrtles Plantation in the West Feliciana town of St. Francisville, Louisiana, holds the rather dubious record of hosting more ghostly phenomenon than just about any other house in the country. But what could be more dubious than the honor itself?

That would be the questionable history that has been presented to explain why the house is so haunted in the first place. Long acclaimed as one of the most haunted houses in America, the Myrtles attracts an almost endless stream of visitors each year, and many of them come in search of ghosts. There seems to be little doubt about the fact that the house is haunted. It's the reason that it's haunted that has been called into question.

For several generations, owners and guides at the plantation have been presenting facts and history that they know is blatantly false. The Myrtles, according to hundreds of people who have encountered the resident spirits, is indeed haunted, but not for the reasons that we've been told. It was a simple check of historical records that revealed the real story.

The true story of the Myrtles may not be as glamorous as the story presented by the staff at the plantation, but it is certainly strange. The history of the plantation is filled with death, tragedy, and despair, leading us to wonder why a fanciful history was created in its place. The Myrtles Plantation was constructed by David Bradford in 1794, and since that time has allegedly been the scene of at least 10 murders.

In truth, though, only one person was ever murdered there, but, as has been stated already, some of the people who've owned the house have never let the truth stand in the way of a good story. But, as we will soon discover, the plantation has an unusual history that genuinely did occur, one that may, and likely has, left its own real ghosts behind. David Bradford was one of five children born in America to Irish immigrants.

In 1777, he purchased a tract of land at a small stone house near Washington County, Pennsylvania. He became a successful attorney, businessman, and deputy attorney general for the county. His first attempt to marry ended only days before his wedding. No details are known about this, but he later met and married Elizabeth Porter in 1785 and started a family.

As his family and business grew, Bradford needed a larger home, and he built a new one in the town of Washington. The house became well-known in the region for its size and remarkable craftsmanship, with a mahogany staircase and woodwork imported from England. Many of the items had to be transported from the East Coast and over the Pennsylvania mountains at great expense. Bradford would use a parlor of the house as an office, where he would meet with his clients.

Unfortunately, he was not able to enjoy his splendid new house for long. In October 1794, he was forced to flee, leaving his family behind. Bradford became involved in the infamous Whiskey Rebellion, and legend has it that George Washington placed a price on the man's head for his role in the affair.

The Whiskey Rebellion took place in western Pennsylvania and began as a series of grievances over high prices and taxes forced on those living along the frontier at that time. The complaints eventually erupted into violence when a mob attacked and burned down the home of a local tax collector.

In the months that followed, residents resisted attacks that had been placed on whiskey, and while most of the protests were non-violent, Washington mobilized a militia and sent it to suppress the rebellion. Once the protests were brought under control, Bradford left the region on the advice of some of the other principals in the affair. After leaving Washington, Bradford first went to Pittsburgh. Leaving his family in safety, he traveled down the Ohio River to the Mississippi.

He eventually settled at Bayou Serra, near what is now St. Francisville, Louisiana. Bradford was no stranger to the area. He had originally traveled here in 1792 to try and obtain a land grant from Spain. When he returned in 1796, he purchased 600 acres of land and a year later built a modest eight-room home near Baton Rouge that he named Laurel Grove.

He lived there alone until 1799, when he received a pardon for his role in the Whiskey Rebellion from newly elected President John Adams. He was given the pardon for his assistance in establishing a boundary line known historically as Ellicott's Line between Spain and the United States. After receiving the pardon, Bradford returned to Pennsylvania to bring his wife and five children back to Louisiana,

He brought them to live at Bayou Sarah, and they settled into a comfortable life there. Bradford occasionally took in students who wanted to study the law. One of them, Clark Woodruff, not only earned a law degree, but also married his teacher's daughter, Sarah Matilda. Clark Woodruff was born in Litchfield County, Connecticut, in August 1791.

Having no desire to follow in his father's footsteps as a farmer, he left Connecticut at the age of 19 and sought his fortune on the Mississippi River, ending up in Bayou Serra. He arrived in 1810, the same year that citizens of the Feliciana Parish rose up in revolt against the Spanish garrison at Baton Rouge. They overthrew the Spanish, and then set up a new territory with its capital being St. Francisville.

The territory extended from the Mississippi River as far east as the Perdido River near Mobile, Alabama. Still seeking to make his fortune, Woodruff placed an advertisement in the St. Francisville newspaper, The Timepiece, in the summer of 1811. He informed the public that an academy would be opening on the first Monday in September for the reception of students.

He planned to offer English, grammar, astronomy, geography, elocution, composition, penmanship, and Greek and Latin. The academy was apparently short-lived, for in 1814 he joined Colonel Hyde's cavalry regiment from the Feliciana Parish to fight alongside Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans. When the War of 1812 had ended, Woodruff returned to St. Francisville with the intention of studying law.

He began his studies with Judge David Bradford and soon earned his degree. He also succumbed to the charms of the Bradford daughter, the lovely Sarah Matilda. Their romance blossomed under the shade of the crepe myrtle trees that reportedly gave the home its lasting name. The young couple was married on November 19, 1817, and for their honeymoon, Woodruff took his new bride to the Hermitage, the Tennessee home of his friend Andrew Jackson.

After the death of David Bradford, Woodruff managed Laurel Grove for his mother-in-law Elizabeth. He expanded the holdings of the plantation and planted about 650 acres of indigo and cotton. Together, he and Sarah Matilda had three children, Cornelia Gale, James, and Mary Octavia. Tragically, their happiness would not last. On July 21, 1823, Sarah Matilda died after contracting yellow fever.

The disease was spread through a number of epidemics that swept through Louisiana in those days. Hardly a family in the region went untouched by tragedy and despair. Although heartbroken, Woodruff continued to manage the plantation and to care for his children with help from Elizabeth. But the dark days were not yet over.

On July 15, 1824, his only son James also died from yellow fever, and two months later, in September, Cornelia Gale was also felled by the dreaded disease. Woodruff's life would never be the same, but he managed to purchase the farm outright from his mother-in-law. She was quite elderly by this time and was happy to see the place in good hands.

She continued to live at Laurel Grove with her son-in-law and granddaughter Octavia until her death in 1830. After Elizabeth died, Woodruff turned his attentions away from farming to the practice of law. He and Octavia moved away from Laurel Grove and he left the plantation under the management of a caretaker. He was appointed to a judge's position over District D in Covington, Louisiana, and he served in this capacity until April 1835.

On January 1, 1834, he sold Laurel Grove to Ruffin Gray Sterling. By this time, Woodruff was living on Rampart Street in New Orleans and had changed the spelling of his last name to Woodruff. He also had been elected as the President of Public Works for the city. During this period, Octavia was sent to a finishing school in New Haven, Connecticut, but she returned home to live with her father in 1836.

Two years later, she married Colonel Lorenzo Augustus Besinkin and moved to his plantation, Oak Lawn, five miles north of New Orleans. In 1840, the Louisiana governor, Isaac Johnson, appointed Woodruff to the newly created office of Auditor of Public Works, and he served for one term. Then, at 60 years of age, he retired and moved to Oak Lawn to live with Octavia and her husband.

He devoted the remainder of his life to the study of chemistry and physics and died on November 25, 1851. He was buried in a Gerrard Street cemetery in New Orleans. In 1834, Laurel Grove was purchased by Ruthen Gray Sterling. The Sterlings were a wealthy family who owned several plantations on both sides of the Mississippi River.

On January 1, Ruffin Gray Sterling and his wife Mary Catherine Cobb took over the house, land, buildings, and all of the slaves that had been bought from Elizabeth Bradford by her son-in-law. Since the Sterlings were leaders in the community, they needed a house befitting their social status. They decided to remodel Laurel Grove. Sterling added a broad central hallway and the entire southern section.

The walls of the original house were removed and repositioned to create four large rooms that were used as separate ladies' and gentlemen's parlors, a formal dining room, and a game room. Trips to Europe to purchase fine furnishings resulted in the importation of skilled craftsmen as well. Elaborate plaster cornices were created for many of the rooms, made from a mixture of clay, Spanish moss, and cattle hair.

On the outside of the house, Sterling added a 107-foot-long front gallery that was supported by cast-iron posts and railings. The original roof was extended to encompass the new addition, copying the existing dormers to maintain a smooth line. The addition had higher ceilings than the original house, so the second-story floor was raised one foot.

The completed project nearly doubled the size of David Bradford's house, and in keeping with the renovations, the name of the plantation was officially changed to "The Myrtles." Four years after the completion of the project, Sterling died on July 17, 1854, of consumption, as tuberculosis was called at the time. He left his vast holdings in the care of his wife, Mary Cobb, who most referred to as a remarkable woman.

Many other plantation owners stated, rather patronizingly from a 21st century point of view, that she had the business acumen of a man, which was high praise for a woman in those days, and she managed to run all of her farms almost single-handedly for many years. In spite of this, the family was often visited by tragedy. Of nine children, only four of them lived to be old enough to marry. The oldest son, Louis, died in the same year as his father.

Daughter Sarah Mulford's husband was murdered on the front porch of the house after the Civil War. The war itself wreaked havoc on the Myrtles and on the Sterling family. Many of the family's personal belongings were looted and destroyed by Union soldiers, and the wealth that they had accumulated was ultimately in worthless Confederate currency. To make matters worse, Mary Cobb had invested heavily in sugar plantations that had been ravaged by the war. She eventually lost all of her property.

She never let the tragedies of the war and the others that followed overcome her, however, and she held on to the Myrtles until her death in August 1880. She was buried next to her husband in the family plot at Grace Church in St. Francisville. On December 5, 1865, Mary Cobb hired William Drew Winter, the husband of her daughter, Sarah Mulford, to act as her agent and attorney and to help her manage the plantation lands.

As part of the deal, she gave Sarah and William the Myrtles as their home. William had been born to Captain Samuel Winter and Sarah Bowman on October 28, 1820 in Bath, Maine. Little is known about his early life or how he managed to meet Sarah Mulford Sterling. However, they were married on June 3, 1852 at the Myrtles, and together they had six children: Mary, Sarah, Kate, Ruffin, William, and Frances.

Kate died from typhoid at the age of three. The Winters first lived at Gatmore Plantation near Clinton, Louisiana, and then bought a plantation on the west side of the Mississippi known as Arbroath.

Twelve years after the death of Ruffin Sterling and after the Civil War, William was named as agent and attorney by Mary Sterling to help her with her remaining lands, including Ingleside, Crescent Park, Botany Bay, and the Myrtles. In return, Mary gave William the use of the Myrtles as his home. Times were terrible, and Winter was unable to hold on to it.

By December 1867, he was completely bankrupt, and the Myrtles was sold by the U.S. Marshal to the New York Warehouse and Security Company on April 15, 1868. Two years later, however, on April 23, the property was sold back to Mrs. Sarah M. Winter as the heir of her late father, Ruffin G. Sterling. It is unknown just what occurred to cause this reversal of fortune, but it seemed as though things were improving for the family once again.

But soon after, tragedy struck the Myrtles once more. According to the January 1871 issue of the Point Coupe Democrat newspaper, Winter was teaching a Sunday school lesson in the gentleman's parlor of the house when he heard someone approach the house on horseback. After the stranger called out to him, saying that he had some business with him, Winter went out onto the side gallery of the house and was shot. He collapsed onto the porch and died.

Those inside of the house, stunned by the sound of gunfire and retreating hoofbeats, hurried outside to find the fallen man. Winter died on January 26, 1871, and was buried the following day in the cemetery at Grace Church. The newspaper reported that a man named E.S. Weber was to stand trial for Winter's murder, but no outcome of the case was ever recorded. As far as is known, Winter's killer remains unidentified and unpunished.

Sarah was devastated by the incident and never remarried. She remained at the Myrtles with her mother and brothers until her death in April 1878 at the age of 44. After the death of Mary Cobb Sterling in 1880, the Myrtles was purchased by Stephen Sterling, one of her sons. He bought out his brothers but only maintained ownership of the house until March 1886.

There are some who say that he squandered what was left of his fortune and lost the plantation in a game of chance, but most likely the place was just too deep in debt for him to hold onto. He sold the Myrtles to Oren D. Brooks, ending his family's ownership.

Brooks kept it until January 1889 when, after a series of transfers, it was purchased by Harrison Milton Williams, a Mississippi widower who brought his young son and second wife Fanny Lintott Harrelson to the house in 1891. Injured during the Civil War, in which he served as a 15-year-old Confederate cavalry courier, Williams planted cotton and gained a reputation as a hardworking and industrious man.

He and his family, which grew to include seven children, kept the Myrtles going during the hard times of the post-war South. But tragedy was soon to strike the Myrtles again. During a storm, the Williams' oldest son Harry was trying to gather up some stray cattle and fell into the Mississippi and drowned, shattered with grief. Harrison and Fanny turned over management of the property to their son, Sergei Minor Williams,

He later married a local girl named Jessie Fowkes and provided a home at the Myrtles for his spinster sister and maiden aunt, Katie. Secretly called "The Colonel" behind her back, Katie was a true Southern character. Eccentric and kind, but with a gruff exterior, she kept life interesting at the house for years.

By the 1950s, the property surrounding the house had been divided among the Williams heirs and the house itself was sold to Marjorie Monson, an Oklahoma widow who had been made wealthy by chicken farms. It was at this point, they say, that the ghost stories of the house began. They started innocently enough, but soon what may have been real-life ghostly occurrences took on a life of their own.

There's no question that the most famous ghostly tale of the Myrtles is that of Chloe, the vengeful slave who murdered the wife and two daughters of Clark Woodruff in a fit of jealous anger. Those who've been listening so far have already guessed that there are some serious flaws in this story, but for the sake of being complete, I include the tale here since it has long been told by owners and guides at the house.

According to the story, the troubles that led to the haunting at the Myrtles began in 1817 when Sarah Matilda married Clark Woodruff. Sarah Matilda had given birth to two daughters and was carrying a third child when an event took place that still haunts the Myrtles today. Woodruff had a reputation in the region for integrity with men and with the law but was also known for being promiscuous.

While his wife was pregnant with their third child, he started an intimate relationship with one of his slaves. This particular girl, whose name was Chloe, was a household servant who, while she hated being forced to give in to Woodruff's sexual demands, realized that if she didn't comply, she could be sent to work in the fields, which was the most brutal of a slave's work. Eventually, Woodruff tired of Chloe and chose another girl to force himself on.

Chloe feared the worst, sure that she was going to be sent to the fields, and she began eavesdropping on the Woodruff family's private conversations, dreading hearing the mention of her name. One day, the judge caught her at this and ordered that one of her ears be cut off to teach her a lesson and to put her in her place. After that time, she always wore a green turban around her head to hide the ugly scar that the knife had left behind. What actually happened next is still unclear,

Some claim that what occurred was done so that the family would just get sick and then Chloe could nurse them back to health and earn the judge's gratitude. In this way, she would be safe from ever being sent to the fields. Others say her motives were not so pure and that what she did was for one reason only: revenge. For whatever reason, Chloe put a small amount of poison into a birthday cake that was made in honor of the Woodruff's oldest daughter

Mixed in with the flour and sugar was a handful of crushed oleander flowers. The two children and Sarah Matilda each had slices of the poisoned cake, but Woodruff didn't eat any of it. Before the end of the day, all of them were very sick. Chloe patiently attended to their needs, never realizing, if it was an accident, that she had given them too much poison. In a matter of hours, all three of them were dead.

The other slaves, perhaps afraid that their owner would punish them also, dragged Chloe from her room and hanged her from a nearby tree. Her body was later cut down, weighted with rocks and thrown into the river. Woodruff closed off the children's dining room where the party was held and never allowed it to be used again as long as he lived. Tragically, his life was cut short a few years later by a murderer. To this day, the room where the children were poisoned has never again been used for dining.

It is called the Game Room today. Since her death, the ghost of Chloe has been reported at the Myrtles and was even accidentally photographed by a past owner. The plantation still sells picture postcards today with the cloudy image of what is purported to be Chloe standing between two of the buildings. The former slave is thought to be the most frequently encountered ghost at the Myrtles. She has often been seen in her green turban, wandering the place at night.

Sometimes, the cries of children accompany her appearance, and at other times, those who are sleeping are startled awake by her face, peering at them from the side of the bed. I'm sure that after hearing this story, even the most non-discerning listeners have discovered a number of errors and problems with this tale. In fact, there are so many errors that it's difficult to know where to begin.

However, to start, it's a shame that the character of Clark Woodruff has been so thoroughly damaged over the years with stories about his adulterous affairs with his slaves and claims that he had one of his lovers mutilated. Sadly, these stories have been accepted as fact, even though no evidence whatsoever exists to say they are true. In fact, history seems to show that Woodruff was very devoted to his wife and was so distraught over her death that he never remarried.

Before we get to the problem of Chloe's existence, we should also examine the murders of Sarah Matilda and her two daughters. In this case, the legend has twisted the truth so far that it is unrecognizable. Sarah Matilda was not murdered. She died tragically from yellow fever, according to historical record, in 1823. Her children, a son and a daughter, not two daughters, died more than a year after she did.

They certainly did not die from the result of a poisoned birthday cake. Also, with this legend, Octavia would not have existed at all. Her mother was supposed to have been pregnant when murdered, but we know that she lived with her father, got married, and lived to a ripe old age. In addition, Woodruff was not killed. He died peacefully at his daughter and son-in-law's plantation in 1851. The key to the legend is, of course, Chloe, the murderous slave.

The problem with this is that, as far as we can tell, Chloe never existed at all. Not only did she not murder members of the Woodruff family, but it's unlikely that the family ever had a slave by this name. Countless hours have been spent looking through the property records of the Woodruff family, which are still available and on file as public record in St. Francisville, searching for any evidence that Chloe existed.

It was a great disappointment to learn that the Woodruffs had never owned a slave, or had any record of a slave named Chloe or Cleo as she appears in some versions of the story. The records list all of the other slaves owned by the Woodruff family, but Chloe simply did not exist. So how did such a story get started?

In the 1950s, the Myrtles was owned by wealthy widow Marjorie Munson, who heard some of the local stories that had gotten started about odd things happening at the house. Wondering if perhaps the old mansion might be haunted, she asked around, and that's when the legend of Chloe got its start. According to the granddaughter of Harrison and Fanny Williams, Lucille Laurison, her aunts used to talk about the ghost of an old woman who haunted the Myrtles and who wore a green bonnet.

They often laughed about it and it became a family story. She was never given a name and in fact the ghost with the green bonnet from the story was described as an older woman, never as a young slave who might have been involved in an affair with the owner of the house. Regardless, someone repeated this story of the Williams family ghost to Marjorie Munson and she soon penned a song about the ghost of the Myrtles, a woman in a green beret.

As time wore on, the story grew and changed. The Myrtles changed hands several more times and in the 1970s it was restored again under the ownership of Arlen Deese and Mr. and Mrs. Robert F. Ward. During this period, the story was greatly embellished to include the poison murders and the severed ear. Up until this point, it was largely just a story that was passed on by word of mouth and it received little attention outside of the area.

All of that changed when James and Frances Kermene Myers passed through on a riverboat and decided to purchase the Myrtles. The house came furnished with period antiques and enough ghost stories to attract people from all over the country. Soon, the story of the Myrtles was appearing in magazines and books and receiving a warm reception from ghost enthusiasts who had no idea that what they were hearing was a badly skewed version of the truth.

The house appeared in a November 1980 issue of Life magazine. But the first book that I have found that mentioned the house was by author Richard Weiner. Both the magazine article and the Weiner book mentioned the poison deaths of Sarah Matilda and her daughters. As time went on, and more authors and television crews came calling at the Myrtles, the story changed again and this time took on even more murders.

In addition to the deaths of Sarah Matilda, her daughters, and Chloe, it was alleged that as many as six other people had been killed in the house. One of them, Louis Sterling, the oldest son of Ruffin Gray Sterling, was alleged to have been stabbed to death in the house over a gambling debt. However, burial records in St. Francisville state that he died in October 1854 from yellow fever.

According to the growing legend, three Union soldiers were killed in the house after they broke in and attempted to loot the place. They were allegedly shot to death in the gentleman's parlor, leaving bloodstains on the floor that refused to be wiped away. One fanciful account has it that years later, after the Myrtles was opened as an inn, a maid was mopping the floor and when she reached the spot where the bloodstains were, she was, no matter how hard she tried, unable to clean it.

Supposedly, the spot was the same size as a human body, and this was said to have been where one of the Union soldiers fell. The strange phenomenon was said to have lasted for a month and has not occurred since. The only problem with this story is that no soldiers were ever killed in the house. There are no records or evidence to say that there were, and in fact, surviving family members denied the story was true. If the ghostly incident occurred, then it must have been caused by something else.

Another murder allegedly occurred in 1927, when a caretaker at the house was supposedly killed during a robbery. Once again, no record exists of this crime, and an incident as recent as this would have been widely reported. The only event even close to this which may have spawned the story occurred when the brother of Fannie Williams, Eddie Harrelson, was living in a small house on the property. He was killed during a robbery, but this did not occur in the main house, as the story states.

The only verifiable murder to occur at the Myrtles was that of William Drew Winter, and it differs wildly from the legends that have been told. As described previously, Winter was lured out of the house by a rider who shot him to death on the porch. It is here where the stories take a turn for the worse.

In the legend, Winter was shot and then, mortally wounded, staggered back into the house, passed through the gentleman's parlor and the lady's parlor and onto the staircase that rises from the central hallway. He then managed to climb just high enough to die in his beloved's arms on the 17th step. It has since been claimed that ghostly footsteps have been heard coming into the house, walking to the stairs and then climbing to the 17th step, where they of course come to an end.

While dramatic, this event never happened either. Winter was indeed murdered on the front porch by an unknown assailant, but after being shot, he immediately fell down and died. His bloody trip through the house never took place, information that was easily found in historical records. So is the Myrtles really haunted?

There's nothing to say that the Myrtles is not haunted. In fact, I believe that it is. There's no denying that the sheer number of accounts that have been reported and collected here would cause the house to qualify as one of the most haunted sites in the country. However, as you have heard, the house may be haunted just not for the reasons that have been claimed for so many years.

In all likelihood, the infamous Chloe never existed, and even if she did, historical records prove that Sarah Matilda and her children were never murdered but died from disease. Instead of ten murders in the house, only one occurred. And when William Winter died, he certainly did not stagger up the staircase to die on the 17th step, as the stories of his phantom footsteps allegedly bear out.

Such tales belong in the realm of fiction, not in the chronicle of one of the alleged most haunted houses in America. The house may really be haunted by the ghost of a woman in a green turban or bonnet. The Williams family had an ongoing tale about her, and while it may have been a story that was never meant to be told outside the family, the story spread nonetheless.

They admit that while the ghost apparently did exist, no identity was ever given to her. It also is very likely that something unusual was going on at the Myrtles when Marjorie Munson lived there, which led to her seeking answers and to her first introduction to the ghost in the green headdress. Did she see the ghost? Who knows, but many others have claimed that they have. Frances Myers claimed that she encountered the ghost in the green turban in 1987,

She was asleep in one of the downstairs bedrooms when she was awakened suddenly by a black woman wearing a green turban and a long dress. She was standing silently beside the bed, holding a candlestick in her hand. She was so real that the candle even gave off a soft glow. Knowing nothing about ghosts, Myers was terrified and pulled the covers over her head and started screaming.

Then she slowly peeked out and reached out a hand to touch the woman who had never moved. Into her amazement, the apparition vanished. Others claim that they have also seen the ghost, and in fact, she was purportedly photographed a number of years ago. The resulting image seems to show a woman, but it does not fit the description of a young woman like Chloe would have been. In fact, it looks more like the older woman that was described by the Williams family. Could this be the real ghost of the Myrtles?

Even after leaving out the ridiculous stories of the poisonings and Winter's dramatic death on the staircase, the history of the Myrtles is still filled with more than enough trauma and tragedy to cause the place to become haunted. There were a number of deaths in the house from yellow fever alone, and it's certainly possible that any of the deceased might have stayed behind after death.

If ghosts stay behind in this world because of unfinished business, there are a number of candidates to be the restless ghosts of the plantation's stories. And if we believe the stories, the place truly is infested by spirits from different periods in the history of the house. There have been many reports of children who are seen playing on the wide veranda, in the hallways and in the rooms,

The small boy and girl may be the Woodruff children who, while not poisoned, died within months of each other during one of the many yellow fever epidemics that brought tragedy to the Myrtles. A young girl with long curly hair and wearing an ankle-length dress has been seen floating outside the window of the game room, cupping her hands and trying to peer inside through the glass. Is she Cornelia Gale Woodruff? Or perhaps one of the Sterling children who did not survive until adulthood?

The grand piano on the first floor plays by itself, usually repeating the same chord over and over again. Sometimes it continues on through the night. When someone comes into the room to investigate the sound, the music stops and will only start again when they leave. Scores of people have filed strange reports about the house.

In recent times, various owners have taken advantage of the Myrtle's infamous reputation, and the place is now open to guests for tours and as a haunted bed and breakfast. Rooms are rented in the house and in cottages on the grounds. The plantation has played host to a wide variety of guests, from curiosity seekers to historians to ghost hunters. Over the years, a number of films and documentaries have also been shot on the ground, and many of them have been paranormal in nature.

One film, which was decidedly not paranormal, was a television miniseries remake of The Long Hot Summer, starring Don Johnson, Cybill Shepherd, Ava Gardner and Jason Robards. A portion of the film was shot at the Myrtles, and it was an experience that the cast and crew would not soon forget. One day, the crew moved the furniture in the game room and the dining room for filming and then left.

When they returned, they reported that the furniture had all been moved back to its original position. No one was inside either room while the crew was absent. This happened several times to the crew's dismay, although they did manage to get the shots they needed. They added that the cast was happy to move on to another set once the filming at the Myrtles was completed. Employees at the house often get the worst of the events that happen here.

They're often exposed first-hand to happenings that would have weaker folks running from the place in terror, and some of them do. One employee was hired to greet guests at the front gate each day. One day, while he was at work, a woman in a white, old-fashioned dress walked through the gate without speaking to him. She strolled up to the house and vanished through the front door without ever opening it. The gateman quit his job and never returned to the house.

The Myrtles can be a perplexing place. History has shown that many of the stories that have been told about the place, mostly to explain the hauntings, never actually occurred. In spite of this, the house seems to be haunted anyway. The truth seems to be an elusive thing at this grand old plantation house, but there seems to be no question for those who have stayed or visited here that it is a spirited place.

At the Myrtles Plantation, the ghosts of the past, whoever they might be, are never very far away from the living. Thanks for listening! If you like what you heard, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. All stories used in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you can find links to the authors, stories, and sources I used in the episode description, as well as on the website at WeirdDarkness.com.

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